[Web4lib] wikis in libraries

[K.G. Schneider]

On a separate point, following up a brief off-list discussion, I do think
there is room for employing a technology when you aren't entirely sure what
the benefits are. That's how MPOW got an RSS feed, and at 23,000+ Bloglines
subscribers today, and a significant bump in site usage, it was a worthy
experiment. I had a student (hi Jon!) who had the time for a project like
that; I wasn't sure if RSS was here to stay (I wasn't even really sure what
it *was*), but the investment was modest, and the outcome a bazillion times
over worth it. 

Every deployment has its elements of a gamble. You can be confident
something will be a big hit, and it fizzles. Something that seems like a fad
turns out to become central to your services. Or you install a product to do
X but it turns out to be only ok for X but surprisingly fabulous for Y and
Z, which you had not at all considered in advance. 

I also got on a side discussion at a preconference I did last week where I
repeated a question a librarian had posed about a service they were
providing-a service this librarian thought very worthy-that they worried was
a "fad." Most of what we think of as fads are trends or phases. Look at
gopher. It had three years in the sun (spring '91 to 94-ish) before the Web
clobbered it. But how many librarians used gopher to help users? And how
many librarians "got on board" because gopher was easier than
fiddle-faddling with a series of clumsy clients? Even the most faddish of
software-think of Orkut-may have got people thinking about networking and
exchanging information online in new ways. (I started an Orkut group for my
alma mater, then forgot all about it. It had almost 100 members when I
logged in to Orkut a couple of weeks ago for the first time-and probably the
last-in ages.)

Anyway, it's Monday and the work pile beckons, but I wanted to throw that in
the mix. 

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com